iOS wins over more new smartphone buyers as Android holds steady

Forty-three percent of recent smartphone buyers picked up an iOS device, while …

iOS is continuing to creep up on Android's smartphone market share, according to a recent survey by Nielsen. While iOS penetration remains a distant second to Android overall, survey respondents in the United States showed that 43 percent of recent smartphone acquirers purchased an iOS device, while new Android owners constituted 48 percent.

The percentage figures above are for "3 month recent acquirers," or survey respondents who got a smartphone in the last three months. Comparing the overall market share figures to the recent acquirer breakdown shows that Android is holding steady: 48 percent of both recent acquirers and smartphone owners in general have Android in this survey. In a survey from January 2012, 46.3 percent of all smartphone owners had Android phones. Only 32 percent of all smartphone-owning respondents now have iOS, compared to 30 percent in January.

The recent-acquirer balance has also shifted since Nielsen's January survey. At that time, 51.7 percent of 3-month recent acquirers had purchased Android phones and 37 percent had chosen iOS. In total, 49.7 percent of the mobile phone-owning public has smartphones, according to the survey.